A Super Sequel!

Guess what, boys and girls? I'm going to COMIC CON this week!!! I anticipate many squealing fangirl moments when my inner nerd comes out to play. And what better time than as I am packing for Nerd Mecca to release the second sexy superhero novella? That's right, y'all. It's here! Superbad, the follow up to Superlovin', is now available at an ebook retailer near you! Observe:

When your mind is a prison, love can set you free.

Ever since her supervillain father experimented on her as a child, Mirabelle “Mirage” Wroth has been able to project unbreakable illusions into the minds of those around her. But when a run-in with an evil Mind Bender snaps a delicate thread in her psyche, she loses control of her gift and can no longer tell where reality ends and illusion begins. Only sanctimonious superhero Captain Justice is immune to her gift and can help her find the truth again—if Mirage can trust another man to define her reality.

Justice is sick of saving damsels in distress–he just wants someone to look beyond the cape to see him—but he can’t turn away from the hauntingly vulnerable Mirage. Suddenly Justice is helping her hide from the police, willing to be downright villainous to be her hero. But as they work to save Mirage from herself, other forces are circling to threaten them both. Tangled in illusions and mind games, can love be real? 

Buy from Amazon :: Nook :: Smashwords

So far the early buzz I'm getting on this one has confirmed my "I have a good feeling about this book" feeling.  I can't wait to see if the wide world loves it as much as I think they will.  Go forth and read, my minions! 

Close Encounters of the Alaskan Kind

I often post pics of my travels, but there today I'm sharing some of the deeply kickass things right in my own back yard.  Some weekends just seem to serve to remind me how awesome Alaska is and this was definitely one of them.  It started yesterday as we were headed up to the Denali National Park for a family getaway.  We hadn't even made it out of our neighborhood before we saw this fella:

Now there have been a ton of eagles this year and the usual crop of moose, but even though people had said this was a big year for bear (and we'd seen plenty of evidence of them), this was the first I'd seen this summer.  Right outside the car window.  Maybe ten feet away.  A nice beginning to the trip.

We headed up to the park, finding the only gorgeous weather in the state, and this morning we took a hike up Savage River inside the park.

We passed a family of dahl sheep up on a hill and kept walking, taking a jog off the main trail over some rocks until that off-shoot pretty much dead ended into the river.  And just as we were turning back toward the main path, we saw them.  That same family of dahl sheep.  Blocking our way.  And coming closer.  And closer.

(No zoom, boys and girls, they really were that close.  Maybe twenty feet away.  If that.)

Now, the sheep aren't aggressive, but they can do some damage if they thwack into you with those horns, so we gave them the right of way, backing up as much as we could until they decided to veer down to the river, where we got an up-close-and-personal view of them crossing (a rarity, according to a nature photographer we chatted with after the sheep had disappeared over the next hill).

(What you don't see in this picture is that the one behind just thwacked the jumper on the butt with his horns because he was taking too long.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I'm a lucky brat.  Today was a good day. 

Fix-It Fridays: Lockout

So I went with my folks to see Lockout at the Bear Tooth (best movie theater/pub ever) earlier this week and when we came out of the movie, my mom told me she'd never before been in the middle of watching a movie and thought "Wow, I can't wait to read Vivi's Fix-It-Friday post on this."  Yes, boys and girls, it was that glaringly ridiculous.

Let's start with the good.  The premise?  Badass.  A prison riot in space with the first daughter as a hostage!  Sign me up, baby.  The dialogue?  Funny as hell - and in a good way!  Not in the groaningly bad way that most action movies go for.  (Well, not too groan-worthy.)  Guy Pierce?  Surprisingly awesome as an action hero.  (Who knew?)  But all that awesomeness barely salvaged the movie.  The devil, as is so often the case, was in the details - and in this case the missing details were everything futuristic and/or scientific about the film.

Movies that take place sixty-seven years in the future need complete world-building.  Some things will have jumped forward technologically, while others will still be done the same way we've always done them.  Some movies excel at the futuristic set-decoration, leaving no detail unconsidered.  Minority Report, comes to mind.  Demolition Man.  This one did not.

**WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.**

We open in a fancy New York hotel suite.  With this kind of lock on the door (--> -->).  Our hero displays his action chops... using guns that have not evolved or developed at all in the last sixty-seven years (I want lasers! phasers on stun!).  He is wearing clothing that would be current today (cuz fashion never changes).  He grabs the All Important Briefcase (which, of course, is latched closed by the little manual dial lock that is so 2079... if by 2079, you mean 1959).  He runs across NYC rooftops (which, if anything, looked a little retro), borrows Batman's motorcycle, and rides it at a bajillion miles an hour... steering one-handed so he can talk on his circa-2013 model iPhone.  There was just NO CONTINUITY OF TIME. 

But alas, that was to be a drop in the bucket of this movie's implausibilities.   I think they were just building up our resistance to the idiocy so by the time the deep space prison was plummeting out of orbit toward the Eastern Seaboard and our Hero and Heroine leap out of it to plunge through the upper atmosphere and parachute down to land safely on a freeway the collective groan in the audience at the sheer ridiculousness isn't quite as loud as would have been an hour and a half earlier.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Some things would have been easy to fix.  Instead of having the President's Daughter mouth off that global corporations hadn't invested millions in this prison space station without expecting to get some deep space research data in return (prompting me to fervently hope there had been a massive currency revaluation), just have her say billions or trillions.  Change one consonant, do another take, problem solved.

Others would have been fun to fix.  When our hero is fist-fighting in a zero-grav chamber, show what actually happens when you punch someone in zero grav (i.e. you both go flying in opposite directions and ricochet off every available surface... rather than flying together to slam into the wall which they then don't bounce off of, for some reason).  Have your fight choreographer read Ender's Game and then really have fun with that scene!  (After you change the dialogue so the force holding them floating in the air is not "gravity".  Or am I completely wrong that gravity is an attractive force?  It's been a while since I've read my Newton, but somehow I don't think the force that makes you float in mid-air on a Space Station that appears to have normal gravity everywhere else can be called "gravity".  Just sayin'.)

But the real issue was the ticking clock: the space prison plummeting toward earth in the Fastest Orbital Decay Ever Imagined.  I realize, screenwriters, that you needed a catastrophic timebomb to amp up the stakes and give Our Hero a reason why he had to get the First Daughter off the station STAT, but couldn't you think of anything better than a prison in space that requires constant 24/7 maintenance attention to keep it from crashing down on New York?  Even if that were even remotely scientifically plausible, don't you think it's the first issue that investors would have asked them to fix before building the damn thing?  Lest it someday fall from the sky and crush them while they are enjoying La Boheme in their private box at the Met?

You need a reason why the President would be compelled to shoot the prison station to smithereens to save the lives of millions even though his daughter is onboard, right?  Easy - you arm the prison.  Give them nukes (or some even scarier futuristic equivalent).  Say the weapons were put on the station (where all the prisoners were supposed to be unconscious all the time in their cryo-whatsis anyway) to either be a first line of defense if aliens ever come for us or, more plausibly, say that the US put them on the station so they would be able to destroy their enemies from space if the need ever arose.  Only, of course, that backfired because now the convicts are in charge and they are pointing the Big Scary Guns at DC and making demands.  Maybe they even fire one off, take out MIR in a fiery blaze, to prove they mean business.  But none of this the-station-is-plunging from orbit crap.  Let's have a little respect for the laws of physics, all right, people?

The other bonus of having the space station stay in space where it belongs?  We skip the jumping out of the space ship and re-entering the earth's atmosphere without burning up or freezing or having your body battered by the sheer force of traveling at those speeds scene.  Oh! And I almost forgot the part where the hero and heroine are separated by the explosion, but he somehow manages to get back to her side to pull her chute for her even though he has no method of propulsion.  So that whole sequence... maybe just a nice explosion instead?  One that sends them hurtling out into space in their little suits and who knows if the good guys will find them among the debris before their oxygen runs out... and there they are, floating together, her injured, him badass, maybe he's building her a space-raft out of debris with his bare hands and using solar winds to sail them back to the nearest authorities because he is just that cool.  Because frankly, that would be more believable.

But you have to respect a film that, in spite of all the seriously ridiculous flaws, still manages to be a deeply enjoyable, entertaining as hell movie.  Sure, they did a lot wrong, but hey, they did something right.

Ninety Percent Awesome, Ten Percent Suck

Writers write, right?  Absolutely.  But the thing is, there's all this behind the scenes non-writing stuff that's part of the job too. In the last month, I've gone through edits for three manuscripts and reviewed galleys for a fourth.  I've run the promo gauntlet for releases and the hamster-wheel of emails that seems to be a constant aspect of the job.  And through it all, I kept thinking about a conversation I had back on one of the cruises I was on in the spring.

I was chatting with one of the performers when I mentioned I'd worked on edits that day and made a face.  He said something along the lines of "But it doesn't feel like work, does it?  You love every second of it, don't you?" and, in perfect honesty, I had to say no.  He was shocked by my lack of blind enthusiasm when it came to my work.  He said that his job never feels like work and he loved it from start to finish.  (Lucky him, right?  Though, for the record, I've heard this same guy bitch about aspects of his job, so there.)  For a moment, I almost felt guilty or wrong that I wasn't one hundred percent euphoric about my job at all times.  I mean, I am insanely lucky to have the life I have and I freaking love what I do... just not every second of every day.  (Especially during edits, which seem to bring out my neurotic insecure side.) 

The more I've thought about this, the more I've concluded that the difference of opinion could have two potential causes (or seventeen million I haven't thought of, but I like these two, so I'm stickin' with 'em.).  ONE - Attitude.  TWO - Crucial differences in our professions.

For Thing One, maybe he's just a more positive person than I am.  Maybe his cup is always half full... though mine is almost always half full too and dude, when did optimism become a competition?  Perhaps it has to do with those affirmation thingies people always seem to want everyone else to do when you project positivity into the universe.  Like if I say "I love edits!" often enough, I will start to believe it.  Though, honestly, it's not the edits I mind.  I actually love my editors and am delighted when they help me craft my books into stronger works - what I don't love is the self-doubt that always seems to crash down on me like an Acme weight during the editorial process.  Which is what got me thinking about Thing Two.  The differences.

You see, reader friend, he's a performer-type and I'm a creator-type.  I'm not saying either one is better or harder than the other, but they sure are different.  He takes popular songs and performs them (brilliantly), and the audience applauds.  I take a blank page, crack open my head and heart to turn it into a story, wrestle with it to twist it into the best version of itself (which always seems to be a moving target), then throw that story out into the world, and no one ever applauds - though on occasion I'll get a nice note from a reader which will make my month or a review like the one earlier this week that makes my life, but on the whole, I'm writing in a vacuum.  So if I'm a bit more nervous about the uncertainties of my job (will this book be good?  will readers choose to read it in their valuable reading time?  will they like it?  will they recommend it to their friends? will those friends like it or will it be the catalyst that destroys their once BFF relationship?) than the performer who beautifully interprets the already beloved songs someone else has created, is that insecurity not warranted?

I don't know a single writer who loves absolutely every second of this career.  (The waiting alone is enough to drive most of us a little batty.)  But that doesn't mean we aren't grateful and freaking over-the-moon to have it.  And if you aren't struggling at least part of the time, are you really challenging yourself?  If life is one hundred percent awesome all the time, are you the luckiest person in the world or are you playing it safe?  The sucky part comes with pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone - but that is also where the gold is, where the most awesome part of the awesome comes in - when you break through the wall of suck into the promised land beyond.  Maybe the suckiness is what makes excellence happen.

Or that's what I'll tell myself, so I don't have to feel guilty about my bad attitude next time I make a face about working on edits.

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Independence Day to my US readers, happy belated Independence Day to my Canadian readers, and just a general Have a Nice Day to my international readers.  Go set of some controlled explosives for the sake of patriotism!

Make My Life

Holy wow, y'all, this review just made my life.  Romance Junkies gave Superlovin' 4.5 Stars (which is excellent timing because the sequel Superbad hits digital shelves NEXT WEEK!!!!).  And guess what?  It's a rave!  I kinda wanna bear this reviewer's children.  I love the way he talks about the book.  Yes, it's entirely possible this review is better than the book itself, but just the fact that one person liked it enough to say the things they said makes me want to dance around the living room.  So please excuse me while I dance around the living room... 

"SUPERLOVIN' is an example of cross-genre romance at its best. For readers interested in a thrilling love story that explores how two people can fulfill each other in spite of all obstacles, I heartily recommend SUPERLOVIN'."

I'm taking that as a proposal.  Why yes, Mr. Reviewer, I will marry you. We can register at Barnes & Noble and honeymoon in a library.  You complete me. 

For Aspiring Romance Authors:

Ever wish you could bypass the slush pile and get your work straight to an editor's desk?

The Golden Network is pleased to offer you just that chance. We're lucky to have secured some of the industry's most sought-after editors to judge a category in the final round of the Golden Pen contest:

Historical – Katherine Pelz, Berkley Publishing Group
Inspirational – Melissa Endlich, Steeple Hill
Novel with Strong Romantic Elements – Valerie Gray, MIRA Books and SPICE Books
Paranormal – Leis Pederson, Berkley Publishing Group
Romantic Suspense – Elizabeth Poteet, St. Martin's Press
Series Romance – Susan Litman, Harlequin Enterprises
Single Title – Deb Werksman, Sourcebooks Inc.
Young Adult – Regina Griffin, Egmont USA

By entering the Golden Pen, not only do you get the chance to make it to the final round (and earn a read from one of these top editors), but you also get constructive feedback from at least one Golden Heart finalist as part of the first-round competition.

The Golden Pen contest is open until August 15, but if you enter by July 15, you'll get $5 off of your entry fee. If you register to judge the first round of the contest, you qualify for an additional $5 discount. So don't delay--get your entry ready today!

Read the Rules and Guidelines: http://thegoldennetwork.com/tgp-rules/
Register to judge: http://thegoldennetwork.com/judge-sign-up/
Enter your manuscript: http://thegoldennetwork.com/tgp-enter/

Please contact the coordinator directly at goldenpencontest@gmail.com if you have any questions.


If you're angling toward becoming a published romance author, contests can be a great way to get impartial feedback AND potentially get you in front of some big time editors.  One recent finalist sold to the editor who first saw her book in the Golden Pen.  So polish up those manuscripts...

Adapt This

I saw this article on Mental Floss which intrigued me, talking about famous authors who hated the famous movies made out of their books.  To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised any authors like movies made out of their books.  It is a complete different medium and it must be a challenge not to feel that your work has been bastardized when it can be massively changed through the course of collaboration that is a part of any film project. 

Just yesterday my dad was having a rant about the TV series Pillars of the Earth and how it couldn't compare to Ken Follet's kickass book.  My personal bugaboos on this topic are Girl, Interrupted (which royally pissed me off because not only did they screw up the book, that was an autobiography and they screwed up Susana Kaysen's life) and The Wedding Date, which took a perfectly charming British rom com called Asking for Trouble by Elizabeth Young and turned it into a vehicle for an American actress and completely changed several major plot points, massively altering the characters, story, message - all of it. 

No, it doesn't surprise me that those authors in that article hate the movies made out of their books.  But I admit to being impressed by the cojones it takes to say it publicly.  Or maybe it's clout.  As a bitty, itty fish in the publishing pool, I'd be giddy if someone wanted to make a movie out of my books, and I'd keep my mouth shut on the final product... but I think I would have to distance myself from the work and probably never see the movie.  An author puts a lot into a book.  It's gotta be painful not to be able to protect it... and then to have the whole world know you for something that is a bastardization. Or rather, they don't know you.  They know this bastardization of your work, but only the rare and sublimely famous (Stephen King, John Grisham...) are ever credited for being the originators of the ideas.  So you get no credit, no control, just the work that you put into creating something twisted until your message, your very reason for writing the book, is corrupted.  So that your voice is never heard, drowned out by the film.  How frustrating.

What do you think is the worst film adaptation ever?  Or, if you aren't feeling so ranty today, what's the best?  (I confess I like the Lord of the Rings movies better than the books.  A fact which horrifies many of my Tolkein-adoring friends.)